15 october 2000

One of the odd choices made by the MUTANT X creative team is that while the book is nominally a Havok solo title, in practice there's an entire team hanging around as well. The book has been rather inconsistent about whether it wants to treat them as co-headliners or as supporting cast, although the former approach has generally been more successful.

Fortunately, Mackie is having a go at the co-headliners approach at the moment, which is why Havok's barely in this issue, and instead we get a Bloodstorm and Gambit story. The gimmick is that a mysterious box has been stolen from the Vault, and Bloodstorm goes after it, with Gambit following her to try and find out why she wants the box. I worked out that it was Dracula on page 1, line 1 of dialogue ("Where is he?"), but the story is still one of Mackie's better efforts. There's some playing off Gambit's involvement in the Morlock Massacre which actually makes moderate sense, and the issue works fairly well to give Bloodstorm and Gambit some much needed character development.

Of course, there's some total inanities in there as well, such as Mackie's attempt to convey Henry Gyrich's obnoxiousness. He's meant to be annoying, not mentally defective, but Mackie has him trying to get the Six to find this box even though he won't tell them who stole it. Surely they'll find out that information anyway if they're successful in the damn mission, so what's the point in withholding it?

This issue's pointless similar-yet-different mainstream characters are Generation X and X-Force cast as the Marauders, which I'd normally grumble about. I'd have to admit, however, that the obese Cannonball did raise a smile. Points, as well, for the cute sequence with Dracula's coffin washing up at a riverside, which I'm going to assume is a deliberate reference to the novel and not just a coincidence. Some perfectly okay art from Ron Lim, as well, and we've got a reasonably decent issue here.

Books I'd like to think Joe Quesada would never have approved, part one: X-MEN DECLASSIFIED.

Finally lumbering out over a month late, this is one of the most bemusingly pointless things I've read in ages. I'm not surprised that it isn't much good - I don't think I've ever given a good review to a story written by Karl Bollers, and I wasn't expecting this to be the issue that changed matters. And obviously the art isn't the problem - Pascual Ferry is one of Marvel's most underused superhero artists, and after a couple of years plugging away on swiftly cancelled books like Heroes for Hire and Warlock, he deserves a better platform. No problems with his work.

But really, what's the point?

The gimmick here is that Wolverine, Gambit and Shadowcat break into a government facility and a load of holograms show them files relating to the various X-Men, with appended new scenes purporting to be revelations about the X-Men's history. Ultimately we establish that the facility holds the remains of Bastion, who's still got the files he stole during Operation: Zero Tolerance, and who was probably just showing them all the other stuff to confuse them.

Leaving aside the question of what Bastion's doing there, given that he has now been comprehensively killed off and revived without explanation more times than any other currently active X-Men villain, and the related question of why Bastion's stolen files contain information post-dating the storyline in which they were stolen, we are left with a bunch of Secret Files style pin-up pages and a load of pointless scenes of things that didn't happen.

I can see what Bollers is trying to do here. He's trying to throw doubt on the X-Men's history and do a paranoia routine. But this approach doesn't work in the context of an ongoing series. Many of the flashbacks we're shown are things we already know to be false. Most of the others are so ridiculous that they certainly wouldn't be inserted into continuity in a sideline book like this.

There's also a certain lack of imagination running through the fake scenes. Rogue and Shadowcat's scenes are both variations on the old changeling myth. Gambit's done a deal in the past with some villains - no, really? Lucifer is Onslaught? Give me a break.

But what makes this really baffling is that it's hard to imagine who the target audience is meant to be. Regular readers don't need the token Secret Files-style entries here, which contain only the bog standard information that you already know. They're also incredibly badly laid out, incidentally. Try using paragraphs next time. Anyhow, the point is that only a virtual newcomer will get much from the bios.

Yet the fake scenes rely on a far more detailed knowledge of the Marvel Universe to understand what's being hinted at. If you can understand this book, you don't need it. If you actually do have a use for a bunch of ultra-basic bios, the barrage of obscure continuity (Lucifer, for god's sake!) will mean little to you. The entire concept is a hopeless mess.

Nice art, though. Maybe one day Marvel will find Pascual Ferry the venue he deserves.

X-MEN: MAGIK proclaims that it's "from the pages of Black Sun", which is more of a warning than an advert.

I can just about see the logic in using Amanda Sefton as the new Magik. God knows bringing back Illyana is something I've got no time for, so at least using another character is an improvement on that. And I can see how Amanda is, in comparison to most X-books characters, a relatively straightforward and baggage-free hero who would prove more accessible to new readers.

So yes, if you're going to reuse the Magik and Limbo concepts, I can see the logic in doing it with Amanda. But I have difficulty seeing the logic of doing it at all. It's not like the fans who were demanding the return of Magik are going to be satisfied with this; and commercially, at a time when Marvel ought to be capitalising on the movie, this seems an odd corner of the X-Men mythos to be pushing.

This is one of the X-office's sporadic attempts to do something a bit Different, so as to satisfy their cravings to be producers of Real Art. That means that Amanda's solo series is basically just about her realm being invaded by Dormammu while Nightcrawler hangs around in the background, but it's a bit surreal, and Liam Sharp breaks off from time to time to do an impression of Dave McKean. I can't quite make up my mind whether the opening page is a parody of a Sandman cover or just a shameless rip-off.

I normally like to support the X-office's ventures into unusual comics, but this is rather lacklustre. The plot is rudimentary, the surreal references seem bolted on, and the whole thing does nothing to address the character's biggest problem - namely, that nothing has been done so far to establish her as a rightful holder of the name. The series should be trying to establish some kind of link with the previous Magik, but instead spends its time repositioning Limbo as some kind of borderline between reality and nightmares, which is nothing to do with the original character at all. If Abnett and Lanning really want to write a story about a mystical character who defends reality against surreal intruders, I'd have thought Dr Strange was a better bet.

This issue does nothing to answer the basic question of why Marvel bothered to bring Amanda Sefton back as Magik in the first place, and it really needed to.

X-MEN: THE HIDDEN YEARS is still off doing the same thing as always. You know the routine by now. Multiple stories at once, obligatory scene in the Savage Land (for the thirteenth consecutive month), all perfectly competent, nothing that I particularly feel like writing about at any length. It's going down to the capsules next month, I think.

It's actually been a while since Marvel did a pointless line- wide crossover, and the orthodox opinion tends to be that this is a damn good thing. However, Maximum Security is here for the next month, and since it's Kurt Busiek, you've got to assume he's got at least some point in mind.

MAXIMUM SECURITY: DANGEROUS PLANET is the prologue, and a rather odd affair. Ego the Living Planet is on a rampage trying to wake up other planets, but the main thrust of the issue is a convention of aliens deciding that they really don't like humans all that much and that something ought to be done about them.

I'm always happy to see some politics turning up in the books, but this issue piles on the space opera trappings to the point where I have difficulty taking anything seriously. The underlying idea is a nice piece of cultural relativism - that by wandering around imposing our ideas of heroism on all these alien races, we're interfering in areas where we have no business doing so. That's at least an arguable point of view which could have made for an interesting story.

But what we end up with is a load of alien ambassadors acting as if they were twelve, the silliest legal system I've ever encountered in fiction, and generally the sort of thing I've always hated about space opera. Let's be reasonable here, decisions in the United Nations are not settled by a bunch of ambassadors shouting at one another, and I don't buy for a second into the idea that the intergalactic equivalent operates in the same way. Since that's the entire thrust of the issue, that means I have a big problem with the issue.

I mean, what do these intergalactic ambassadors say when they get home? "Ah, Z'Krj. Did you read out the prepared speech, explain our position thoughtfully, and phone back for instructions before responding to any new development on behalf of our entire planet?" "No, great leader. I got rather carried away and signed our planet up to invade another world because everyone else was shouting very loudly." "You useless asshole, Z'Krj."

So how does this wonderful body of shouting adolescent ambassadors reach decisions? Why, by M'ndavian justice, of course. (Jesus.) This involves - get this - having a bunch of coloured Judgment Gems in the room. They monitor everyone's "innermost beliefs" and turn white for not guilty, and black for guilty. This, apparently, is "the most perfect legal system in existence."

Let's be clear on this. The most perfect legal system in existence has no rules on the admissibility of evidence, no procedures to establish whether the jury are being given the whole truth, appears to be directed to deciding what the law should be rather than whether the accused has complied with it or not (which means it's a system of legislature, not of judiciary), and decides cases by monitoring the internal prejudices of the juros. Oh yes, and it's determining the case by reference to the inner beliefs of the ambassadors, which may bear no resemblance to their government's policy at all. What a magnificent legal system. We should try it in Alabama some time, see if we can crank the black conviction rate up a bit further.

This is the best judicial system a thousand races could come up with? Jesus, no wonder the humans always beat them up. They're clearly all as thick as pigshit. We got past this stage when the Roman Empire was still around! Yes, it provides a nice moment at the end when Lilandra has a moment of despair and the last gem turns black, but it's still such a monumentally daft legal system that I'm fundamentally unable to take the story seriously at all.

And it's called M'ndavian justice, for god's sake.

I go into any Kurt Busiek story with optimism, but I'm afraid this issue reduces my expectations for Maximum Security to my normal level of optimism for whopping great crossovers. Not promising at all.